Diplomacy

Australia is one of the most highly globalised nations on the planet and therefore extremely dependent on an effective and active diplomacy. In a region undergoing rapid and transformational change, where shifting power balances are creating uncertainty about the existing regional order, Australia’s security and prosperity rely heavily on its international networks and relationships with both near neighbours and geographically-distant allies.

The Lowy Institute has conducted ground-breaking comparative research on Australia’s diplomacy and that of like-minded nations. It focuses on public diplomacy and Australia’s soft-power capabilities, leading-edge research on ediplomacy, consular affairs, international broadcasting, leadership, and resourcing of Australia’s international policy infrastructure and its overseas network. The Institute’s work has been instrumental in shaping a parliamentary enquiry into Australia’s diplomatic network, providing independent, non-partisan policy options to steer Australia’s diplomatic future.

In 2016, the Lowy Institute released the Global Diplomacy Index, an interactive web tool which maps and ranks the diplomatic networks of all G20 and OECD nations. The interactive allows readers to visualise some of the most significant diplomatic networks in the world, see where nations are represented – by city, country, and type of diplomatic mission – and rank countries according to the size of their diplomatic network

“Flattery with a catch” is the best way to describe Donald Trump’s call to include Australia in an expanded Group of 7 meeting, or G7.
No doubt Canberra would love a seat at the top table. But the US President has also proposed bringing Russia back into the fold ­– which will be

China’s barley tariffs have thrust the challenges of trade into the headlines with a prominence rarely seen in the popular Australian media. Although a crucial basis of national prosperity, the “trade” side of Australia’s international engagement has seemingly always had a lower profile than

In April, media reports revealed that a New Zealand court had issued an arrest warrant for a South Korean diplomat on sexual assault charges. South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) refused to cooperate with New Zealand authorities, invoking diplomatic immunity. Instead, they disciplined

A lot of ink is flowing about the “new normal” that will prevail post-crisis. A brief look at four different international issues offers a glimpse of what this “new normal” in international cooperation might be.
The first concerns global health. Leaving aside for the moment the call by

Jon Philp, who commenced as Australian High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea early this month, is the 16th to serve as Australia’s lead diplomatic representative in Port Moresby. I know from experience that the role is unlike any other in the Australian foreign service. The incumbent has the

There are many reasons the world needs an independent inquiry into the origins of the novel coronavirus. After all, the pandemic has infected nearly three million people and taken around 200,000 lives worldwide, at latest count. And the world should push for one at the appropriate time. Properly and

Since it was first identified in the early 1980s, HIV/AIDS has infected an estimated 78 million people and killed 35 million. Although there have been significant advances in treating HIV, there is still no cure and no vaccine.
So there is a bitter sweet irony in the fact that Australian trials

In an opinion piece published in the Nikkei Asian Review, Natasha Kassam argues that China has leapt on the opportunity to shape the global narrative about its response to the coronavirus as other countries grapple to manage the crisis

COVIDcast is a Lowy Institute pop-up podcast for anyone interested in understanding the effect of coronavirus on global politics. Each week for the next few weeks, Lowy Institute experts will sit down to discuss the implications of coronavirus for the world. To listen to the first episode, click

After running seven delegations and facilitating 49 individual events as part of the Youth Entrepreneurs and Leaders Speaker Series, funded and supported by the Australian Government’s largest public diplomacy program, Australia now, I have become increasingly aware of the need to capture the

The collapse of the Soviet Union was – for Vladimir Putin – one of the greatest geopolitical disasters of the 20th century. Since the tumultuous 1990s, Russia has re-emerged as an important global actor, albeit with inherent state weaknesses, including, but not limited to, how Moscow is governed

Joe Hockey, former Treasurer, has stepped down as Australia’s ambassador to the United States and will soon be replaced by another former cabinet minister, Arthur Sinodinos. In bureaucracies, changes in personnel should not matter, but in this instance the change will be palpable. The new

Back to the future
One of the unreported but intriguing documents in this year’s release of Australian Cabinet papers is a 1999 review of the value of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group.
It is interesting because officials will start meeting in Kuala Lumpur next

Jason Rezaian was correspondent for the Washington Post in Iran from 2012 to 2016 – only for more than 18 months of that time, he was unjustly held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, in the same wing where Australian-British academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert is presently locked away on accusations of

Some people believe politics and sport should never mix. Not here at The Interpreter. The field of play may provide a distraction from a world of troubles, and great achievements may bring together a divided folk, but sport is also a theatre of symbols – of power, money, identity – that carries

As 2019 winds up, Lowy Institute staff and Interpreter contributors offer their favourite books, articles, films, or TV programs this year.
My favourite book of 2019 was Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, by George Packer.
Everything that Packer writes is worth

Australia’s depleted international broadcasting is impairing the projection of Australia’s soft power at a time when government is seeking to increase its regional influence, particularly in the Pacific

As 2019 winds up, Lowy Institute staff and Interpreter contributors offer their favourite books, articles, films, or TV programs this year.
Earlier this month, Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC, hosted its flagship Monday night program Q&A in Suva, Fiji. For Australian political

How many – and where – diplomatic missions are established can be an important signal of priorities and challenges for a country’s foreign policy. For example, of the 61 countries included in the Lowy Institute’s Global Diplomacy Index, Ireland has boosted its network the most since 2017,

Diplomats around the world are keeping busy. In an era where you’d be forgiven for thinking chequebook diplomacy, digital diplomacy, cricket diplomacy, and – of course – Twitter diplomacy form the basis of international relations, there is still a place for traditional diplomacy.
The 2019

The refusal of the Vanuatu government to allow high-profile Vanuatu-based journalist to fly home on Saturday has given a sharper edge to concerns about a wider trend of attacks on media freedom in the Pacific and highlights both China’s influence and Australia’s policy failure in broadcast and

As the ABC chair Ita Buttrose reminded the audience at the weekend’s Lowy Institute Media Awards dinner, this year marks 80 years since Australia started broadcasting internationally. As she noted, Prime Minister Bob Menzies mused at the inauguration of the service on 20 December 1939, “The time

This article is based on the podcast series “Developing” featuring interviews with PNG journalists, industry leaders, and politicians.
Papua New Guinea has gained a reputation – at least, in international reporting on the country – for being corrupt, violent and poor, yet also a

Only last week The Interpreter featured an article about the pitfalls of importing a major international sporting event into a country that didn’t have enough domestic interest or emotional investment to support it. That may have been the case in Qatar, but having just returned from two weeks and

The current diplomatic spat between the United Kingdom and the United States, following a fatal road accident involving the wife of a US “diplomat”, draws attention, yet again, to diplomatic immunity and its potential abuse.
The facts, as reported by the UK media and based on witness accounts

The World Athletics Championships in Qatar wrapped up on the weekend, but only the most parochial of organisers would boast it as a success. It featured athletes retiring due to heat stroke, a coach sent home for alleged doping abuses, and stadium attendances nothing short of abysmal.
When quizzed

Book review: The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir, by Samantha Power (Harper Collins 2019)
Samantha Power, an Irish immigrant whose tenacity and intellect earned her a place at Yale and Harvard and led her to become a war correspondent in the Balkans, rose to prominence when her 2002 book, A

On the weekend of 24–25 August, the Brisbane City Council painted over a freshly-completed mural of a Korean statue on a traffic signal box. The mural had been approved by the Council as part of its Urban Smart Project but it responded to complaints that it was “offensive graffiti

The escalating protests in Hong Kong, the detention of Chinese-Australian writer Yang Hengjun on trumped-up charges, and the appalling treatment of ethnic Uighurs have resulted in renewed calls and pressure on Australia to act on human rights issues with China. While this is noble, human rights

This year’s summit season in global diplomacy is in full swing. The G20 and G7 leaders’ meetings are done and dusted, as is the Pacific Islands Forum. Preparations for the East Asia Summit and APEC are entering top gear. The business of global governance has, however, become decidedly edgy, with

The US decision to impose travel restrictions on Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif when he made a visit to UN headquarters in New York for a 17 July meeting inflamed already strained tensions between Tehran and Washington.
In a break from the usual courtesy extended to foreign dignitaries

The candidates for two non-permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council for 2021–22 are now in, with three countries heading to the final stage to gather support and votes for their respective bids: Canada, Ireland, and Norway, representing the “Western European and Others” group,

Never one to shy from lofty goals, French President Emmanuel Macron used the G7 summit in the French seaside town of Biarritz to make tenuous first steps in rejuvenating the West as the world’s most powerful political alliance.
The summit ended yesterday amid improbable displays of goodwill and

“Small states like Singapore can do little to influence the big powers, but we are not entirely without agency.” When Lee Hsien Loong delivered his keynote at the Shangri-La Dialogue back in June, his pragmatism over great-power competition surprised many (some more pleasantly than others). But

Australia is known as a great export nation, but one of its least successful and most tenacious exports has again surfaced this week. In a video that appears to have “gone viral”, an Australian tourist in Bali terrorises locals – fly-kicking a motorcyclist off his bike, assaulting a man in his

The World Aquatics Championships in Gwangju clearly won gold in the race for sporting headlines these last few days. Just like the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics last year, it seemed South Korea had once again become a perfect stage for a world class mix of sport and politics.
This time, however,

Kim Darroch endured a torrid week, quitting his post as Britain’s ambassador to Washington following a devastating leak of his confidential dispatches about the Court of Trump. He would take little comfort from knowing he’s hardly the first diplomat to be left red-faced by a security breach.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has a longstanding commitment to achieving gender equality. We have made great progress supporting women in leadership and it is a point of pride that many high performing women have served in key positions, including as ambassadors to three of

Around the world, the fields of diplomacy, defence and intelligence – those jobs that underpin so much of how governments engage with one another – have long been male-dominated professions, often with “boys club” cultures.
But in Australia, these professions are slowly shaking

When the Australian Defence Force first dispatched its flotilla known as the “Indo-Pacific Endeavour”, the then Defence minister Christopher Pyne touted the regional drills as Australia’s “premier international engagement activity” designed to “enhance partnerships”. But what lies

On Sunday Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that Marise Payne will be Minister for Foreign Affairs in his post-election cabinet. Selected to take over the portfolio last year after Julie Bishop’s resignation (and reportedly at her recommendation), Marise Payne had just eight months in the

Governments in Australia are judged, in part, by their handling of the relationship with China. And while foreign policy has barely featured in Australia’s election campaign, the Chinese government is watching our election with interest and intent.
An early release of this year’s Lowy

I was surprised and disturbed The Interpreter published the recent article (Australian media: missing in action on Bougainville) which included claims of a “paucity of coverage by the ABC of one of the most important running stories in the Pacific”.
As Managing Editor Asia Pacific

Western governments have long complained about the lack of reciprocity in dealing with China. As the traditional basis for international relations, reciprocity suggests that benefits and penalties alike, granted from one state to another, should be returned in kind.
In diplomatic relations,

Following the Trump-Kim summits and a gush of commentary on “presidential diplomacy”, “face-to-face diplomacy”, “summit diplomacy”, and even “Trumpian diplomacy”, we’ve somehow come to accept politicians as diplomats. It may be time to recall the difference – before it